In the photo above, Frederick Small is headed to his arraignment at Chamberlain Hall. 1) Fred Bean 2) not known 3) Frederick Small 4) George Philbrick

Voted “Best of New Hampshire” by New Hampshire Magazine

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Lead Segment on Boston WCVB-TV’s Chronicle

Now Available as an Audiobook!

Perfection To A Fault: A Small Murder in Ossipee, New Hampshire, 1916 is the non-fiction account of the events that encompassed a murder and trial at the turn of the century in Ossipee, New Hampshire. When Florence Small’s smoldering body rose to the surface of the basement water, local folks immediately suspected her husband of the crime. Frederick Small was an outsider, a Boston man, who had moved to Ossipee Lake to semi-retire. There was a deep distrust of “city fellas up there behind the Ossipees,” in 1916 and perhaps this suspicion was warranted. But how could Frederick have been responsible for a murder and a fire that happened seven hours after he had left for Boston on a business trip? The sensational trial that followed was unlike any previously experienced in Carroll County. And although everybody from the Boston area, to Portland, Maine, to New York City had an opinion, nobody anticipated the decision the jury would reach. The unrest on the ill-fated property remained even in 1956, when Anna Foley’s unsuspecting son and daughter-in-law felt the effects of the events of 1916 one August night while vacationing on the property.

The Manchester Leader and Evening Union newspaper wrote in anticipation of a verdict, “If the state has proved its case, it has developed a new type of New Hampshire criminal. It has brought forth a cool, daring, mechanical and chemical genius, a man who scorned the ordinary forms of murder but who brought forth to the mountains of this quiet village a science which would baffle a Craig Kennedy or Sherlock Holmes. The jury of his peers will decide whether Frederick L. Small is that man or the normal individual who has been made a victim of circumstances and is being tried for a crime which he never committed and of which he had no knowledge.”

Perfection To A Fault Featurette

In celebration of the book’s second printing, we’ve returned to the scene of the crime!

In celebration of the second printing of Perfection To A Fault, as the 100th anniversary of this captivating story approaches, we’ve returned to many of the locations in Ossipee that were crucial to this historical, true crime story. We want to thank the Ossipee Historical Society for giving us access to the court room where the Small Murder Trial actually took place.